4/
By 1888, the island was annexed and reserved for tens of thousands of sheep owned by a Scottish company, irrevocably transforming the landscape into an indistinct meadow for wool production.

The Rapa Nui had cultural practices that limited the exploitation of fisheries, debunking the "Tragedy of the Commons" myth. Their collapse wasn't a result of "innate selfishness," but of Hilaire Belloc’s chilling observation: "Whatever happens we have got / The Maxim gun, and they have not."

#RapaNui

3/
• The Slave Trade: In the 1860s, brutal slave raids captured over a thousand inhabitants. Those repatriated brought smallpox, turning the island into a "vast charnel-house."

• Capitalist Extraction: European traders later burned huts and destroyed crops to force the starving survivors off the land.

#history
#EasterIsland
#RapaNui
#ecocide

2/
The historical reality is not "ecocide," but colonial homicide. Early visitors, like the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen on his flagship, recorded a lush, cultivated island with a healthy population. The Rapa Nui did not commit suicide; they were liquidated by globalized profit-seeking:

• The Invasive Vanguard: Ecology was first destabilized by invasive rats that arrived with European ships.

#history
#EasterIsland
#RapaNui
#ecocide

The "ecocide" of Easter Island is a myth (and the real story is darker)

The mainstream narrative of the Rapa Nui—popularized by figures like Jared Diamond—is a "fable of global ecocide" used to blame human nature for systemic failure. In this myth, a "selfish" population overexploited their trees to move stone statues, eventually descending into cannibalism and war. This is a lie designed to glorify the hunter by blaming the lion.

#history
#EasterIsland
#RapaNui
#ecocide